


Speeding Through Red Lights Into Paradise (Or: A Rescue In Four Parts)

by auroreanrave



Category: Suspiria (1977)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 09:55:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7613605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auroreanrave/pseuds/auroreanrave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Suzy and Sarah escape from the Academy in modern-day Germany and recover while helping save the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Speeding Through Red Lights Into Paradise (Or: A Rescue In Four Parts)

**Author's Note:**

> So: Suspiria is one of my favourite ever films and my go-to film whenever it's a rainy, stormy weekend. However, I've always felt such sympathy for poor Sarah whose only crime is not looking before she leaped. I love her and Suzy's friendship/relationship, and so I wanted to adapt that and give them a happy ending while dealing with the issue of the Three Mothers and bringing the whole mythos together, however lightly. I truly hope it works and that you enjoy it.
> 
> Title is partially from 'Youth' by Troye Sivan.

**prelude (or climax)**

 

Sarah awakens from the possession like it's a nightmare, which, it is. Her skin crawls with frightful anticipation, as if waiting for the killing blow. She remembers running and falling and fighting and a gnarled hand cupping her throat.

The fog in her brain clears as she stumbles a little, unsteady in her bare feet, as she sees the flames.

Then she sees Suzy.

Brave, brilliant, weird Suzy, with her practised upper New York accent and her shoes from Prada. She had looked like a vision when Sarah had first seen her in the changing room, before the academy became a labyrinth.

"We have to run! Now!" Suzy screams, running forward to grab at Sarah with one hand as a tapestry in the bedroom ignites. Bedroom, light, fire; it all connects in Sarah's mind. Suzy holds a knife in her hand; the blood is black and crusted, and Sarah remembers.

Mater Suspiriorum is dead, rotting and fiery, on the bed. Her stink sings to high heaven.

Sarah follows Suzy as they escape down the hallways. They stop for a second, and see the staff, clutching their throats and screaming curses that lodge in their mouths.

"Please, Sarah, come on!" Suzy is demanding and pulls her down the staircase as fire shatters the glass around them. The storm rages on.

It's only when they step outside, Sarah's feet slipping on wet cobblestones as rain pounds down on them, Suzy's hands on Sarah, that Sarah can finally breathe. The air is cool and fresh in her lungs and she coughs and hacks until there's nothing left in her body.

"We're alive," Sarah says, as she hugs Suzy tight. Suzy is crying and smiling and laughing, overcome. "We're alive."

 

**conflict (or denouement)**

 

The academy is destroyed afterwards. The police claim it the work of a lightning storm that caused an electrical fire. The students are scattered back home, and Suzy and Sarah hide out in Sarah's hotel room for a week. They avoid the local newspapers and social media, and Suzy speaks only to her mother once in clipped, short words.

"Now what?"

They're at the edge of the hotel's pool, drinks at their elbows. "I just... I can't go back to my life. Not now. Maybe not ever." Suzy sips her drink. "There are witches in the world. How can I let that go and just become a dancer?"

"Maybe that's the point," Sarah says, "you need to do this so you can live. If you stay in this... it could consume you."

"I have a place," Sarah says, ten minutes and two rounds of iced teas later, "you could come with me if you want. Clear your head."

"Thanks," says Suzy. "I'd like that."

The cabin in Switzerland is cold and luxurious and in a town small enough to not be visible on Google Maps when Suzy tries to do so. They sleep in comfortable beds and do nothing but eat chocolate, drink wine, and watch comedies for three days.

Suzy kisses her on the third day. "This isn't - " she breaks off to focus, to insist, "this isn't some thank you for letting me come here and get my head on straight. I've wanted to do this for a while, and if you like me too, I'd like to kiss you again."

Sarah grins, her mouth smudged with chocolate, and kisses Suzy because finally, finally, finally.

 

**climax (or aftermath)**

 

Suzy dreams in shades of red. She sees two women, an incomplete triangle, and their power weakening. Red lights and red lights. She knows this. She does not know how. She cannot dance. She knows she will not until it is done, finally and forever and ever.

"I want to take them down. The other Mothers," Suzy says. She and Sarah are entangled in bed, limbs aching. "They... they're the centres of so much evil in the world. Imagine what they could be doing right now."

"How would we find them?" Sarah asks, and it's not dismissive, and Suzy loves her for that.

The answer comes in the form of Frank Mandel. He has contacts around the globe and Skypes them. "There's a man and his sister, the Elliots, who may have, inadvertently, found something in New York."

Suzy ignores the pull to go back to New York. This, for the time being, is her home. Suzy loves the stark cold, the severity, the comfort inside these walls and with Sarah. She doesn't need to dance, not now. "What is he planning on doing?"

"Mark and Rose found something about the history of the Three Mothers. The homes they were built as seats of power. Mark managed to decode one of them - turns out it's some ancient brownstone in Manhattan." _Mater Tenebrarum_ , she thinks. Knows.

Rose and Mark appear on Skype in the next few days - pale and worried and brave - and ask Suzy and Sarah for help. "I just stabbed her," Suzy says, plainly. "I didn't worry about the rituals or semantics."

A week later, a news report comes in on the flags that Sarah has set up on social media. A brownstone in New York has been burnt down, killing the occupants inside. Mark and Rose appear the next day, sooty and sleepy and alive.

"How did it feel?" Suzy asks, despite herself.

"Good," Rose says, a defiant tilt to her chin. "She tried to kill me. It felt good."

The final fight comes months later when Elisa Mandy, her little girl Sarah at her side, arrives at the cabin. Suzy might not know magic, but she's spent a little time amongst protection charms. She doesn't need them though. Elisa is as fierce and good as they come. Her little girl is sweet and likes Suzy and Sarah's old ballet photos.

"She's murdered my friends." _Mater Lachrymarum_. "She's the last one. If she goes, they're gone forever. But I need your help."

"Alright then," Suzy says, and Sarah presses a kiss to her forehead.

Rome is painful and drawn out, and it's only by sheer luck that they all survive. Mater Lachrymarum is crushed beneath her building, entombed in her own edifice. The weight lifts from their shoulders forever. Sarah's feet itch to dance with joy.

 

**denouement (or beginning)**

 

They all meet at the cabin - Suzy and Sarah's home, there is no use calling it anything else these days - a week or so later. Mark and Elisa chat and Rose plays with little Sarah. Suzy prepares dinner and Sarah sets the table and Frank pours the wine. They break bread and share food and pray to whomever they pray to.

The world, little by little, becomes better. The seven of them know that it is down to them, and this more than enough.

Afterwards, Suzy watches the stars from the porch with her hot chocolate, Sarah's sleepy head on her shoulder, and finds herself unable to stop smiling.

_I want to dance again_ , she thinks, and it is good.


End file.
